North East Members, Kurt Schwitters (Part One) — The Elterwater Merz Barn

As the first of three events in different cities focusing on the creative legacy of Kurt Schwitters, members are invited to view the Merz Barn wall in Newcastle and hear Ian Hunter, Direct of the LITTORAL Arts Trust, the organization that is campaigning to restore Schwitter’s remaining Merbau works, and Rob Airey, Keeper of Art at Hatton Gallery, on the historical significance of Schwitters.

Left unfinished after he died in early January 1948, Kurt Schwitters’ final Merzbau (the Elterwater Merz Barn) in Cumbria was neglected for many years until the artist Richard Hamilton arranged for the surviving art work to be removed for safe keeping to the Hatton Gallery in 1965.

MERZMAN: the legacy of Kurt Schwitters
Coordinated by Cumbrian-based LITTORAL Arts Trust, 2011 will see a season of exhibitions, performances and public events highlighting the creative legacy of the artist Kurt Schwitters. We are delighted to invite members to three related events across our national programmes which seek to explore his historical and
contemporary resonance.

Kurt Schwitters was born in 1887 in Hanover, Germany. He was associated with some of the major international art movements of the 20th century, but is perhaps best known for his invention of ‘Merz’. He first applied the name to collages or ‘Merzbilden’ (Merz pictures) which incorporated found objects and materials such as bus tickets, cigarette wrappers, and string, but went on to explore this technique through a diverse range of media including poetry, performance, graphic design (the Merz magazines), and four architectural installations called ‘Merzbau’ (Merz building). Schwitters spent the last three years of his life in Ambleside in the Lake District, and it was here that he began
his final Merzbau (the Elterwater Merz Barn) in an old barn at Langdale. Although it was unfinished on his death in 1948, part of the structure is now on display in the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle.

Since his death, Schwitters’ bold and wide-ranging practice has inspired successive generations of artists with Peter Blake, Richard Hamilton, Susan Hiller, and Damien Hirst, amongst others, citing him as a major influence.